Menu

Geese Drop-in

It was a quiet winter morning at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, and the sandhill cranes were enjoying it immensely. It was sunny, the temperature was quite reasonable for January, and most of all, the field had plenty to forage on. In short, it was an absolutely perfect day.

That is, until the geese decided to drop in for brunch. At first, it was just one snow goose that decided it would join the cranes. But, where there is one goose, there are thousands, and before the cranes realized what was about to happen, the geese began to land. What was a quiet morning turned, in a heartbeat, into an intense, noisy affair. What was a serene field with plenty of room to spread out turned into a crowded, cramped space, with geese underfoot everywhere. What was the perfect spot to feed turned into something considerably less so. Worse, geese are flighty, constantly taking off and landing, and in the process, stirring up the dust up constantly.

The sandhill cranes, though, suffered their fate admirably. They, to the best of their ability, ignored their uninvited guests, choosing, instead, to focus on their brunch. And the geese? They were happy with their new-found bounty, and stayed on for dinner!